Leaking pipes - System loses 45% of water

WATER charges have been identified as a red-line issue by Labour as talks about forming a coalition with Fine Gael proceed.

However, yesterday’s admission that six billion gallons of drinking water — 45% of that produced in the county — are lost through leaking pipes in County Cork describes a bizarre situation. It suggests too that a huge deficit in funding water supply systems needs to be made up. It is extremely difficult to see how that can be done in our economic circumstances without imposing water charges — or local charges of some kind, especially as the EU has strongly advocated such charges.

This situation has been reached because of years of neglect by local authorities denied the necessary funding by central government.

Drinking water is not cheap to produce or deliver and some sort of a charge seems inevitable but it must be ring-fenced for water processing and delivery.

We must insist too that if charges and the metering to define these charges are introduced that our water supply service is not privatised.